Dmitry Minin

Tuesday January 21, 2014

On the eve of the international Middle East peace conference scheduled to take place January 22 in Geneva, the situation in Syria has again abruptly taken a turn for the worse. Various groups of Islamists have entered into a fierce armed conflict. Casualties on both sides have already greatly exceeded 1000 people.

The troublemaker was the Islamic Front (IF), formed around two months ago from several groups and numbering approximately 50,000-60,000 fighters. On January 3 its troops attacked armed groups from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which has proclaimed itself part of al-Qaeda and is estimated to number up to 22,500 fighters, in several places…

It was immediately obvious that it was on the IF that the West had placed its bets in the Syrian civil war after the Free Syrian Army (FSA) lost its fighting effectiveness in conflicts with government troops. In early December 2013 the leaders of the IF met with U.S. and British representatives in Ankara, mediated by Qatar; here, in the opinion of experts, they were promised military assistance and participation in the division of power in exchange for forcing "open al-Qaedaites" out of the country.read on...

Friday December 13, 2013

After suffering one military defeat after another, the Syrian radical opposition, backed by the support of the West and the monarchies of the Persian Gulf, are increasingly retaliating cruelly against the civilian population. The jihadists seize towns and cultural and religious sites which up to that point had remained outside the combat zone, loudly proclaiming their victories.

For example, in response to the advance of the government army into the Qalamoun mountains between Damascus and Homs, where a powerful group of rebels had gathered for a sudden advance on the capital from the north (this group grew from 5,000 men a year ago to 20,000 in November of this year), the jihadists once again rushed into the nearby Christian town of Maaloula.

After vandalizing and desecrating the ancient churches, on December 2 they took 12 nuns from the Orthodox convent of St. Thecla hostage, hiding them in the city of Yabrud, which is held by the rebels. The rebels stated that they would burn the convent and kill the hostages, including the abbess, Mother Pelagia Sayyaf, after which the army retreated.read on...

Saturday December 7, 2013

Israel is stepping up its efforts to sabotage the agreements reached in Geneva on the issue of Iran's nuclear program. On December 1 the head of the Israeli military intelligence agency AMAN, Amos Yadlin, and former CIA director Michael Hayden simultaneously and in unison, although in different parts of the world, stated that Iran has already crossed the nuclear threshold and is ready to “build several nuclear bombs in a matter of weeks.” In their opinion, requirements for the further denuclearization of Iran should be made significantly stricter.

American congressmen and senators close to AIPAC, which lobbies for the interests of Israel in the U.S., have prepared a package of sanctions against Iran which they propose to put into effect immediately if the agreements between the IRI and the P5+1 are not being fulfilled. Furthermore, several pro-Israel congressmen are prepared to introduce bills to both houses of the U.S. Congress in the near future urging the tightening of existing sanctions against Iran.

A real uprising against the closing of the “Iranian dossier” is brewing in Congress. Both Republicans and Democrats are criticizing Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry. For the first time, the administration has come up against the joint efforts of the two most powerful foreign policy lobbies in the U.S. - the pro-Israel lobby and the pro-Arab lobby. The latter is no less active in the U.S. than the former, and is headed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE. The Gulf lobby differs from the better-known Israel lobby in that it spends dozens of times more money on its PR campaigns than Israel…read on...

Monday October 21, 2013

It is no longer possible to conceal the obvious. The West, in its attempts to remove Bashar al-Asad from power during the years of the war in Syria, has nurtured a force so sinister that its tentacles are now reaching to the Western capitals themselves. Al-Qaed is at the peak of its influence in the Middle East. In Somalia, the group al-Shabaab has announced its complete merger with this organization.read on...

Monday September 9, 2013

The newspaper Israel Hayom conducted a public opinion survey according to which Israel was the only country in which a possible U.S. military strike against Syria is supported by the majority of the population. While in America and Europe 90% of the population is against the operation, in Israel 66% of the population supports it. 73% of Israelis believe that a strike against the el-Asad regime will be made, and only 13% are concerned that it will lead to a regional war.

This attitude among Israelis toward the military operations planned against Syria is the result of active state propaganda. Netanyahu's government has cast aside all concerns that if the ruling regime in the neighboring country is overthrown, even fiercer opponents of Israel may come to power, and it is advocating as powerful a strike as possible against Syria. Behind the missile launches held by the Israeli navy in conjunction with the Americans in the waters of the Mediterranean Sea on September 3 stand geopolitical reckonings connected mainly with the future of the Syrian Golan Heights, occupied in 1967; it is no accident that the question of their ownership has remained in the shadow of the discussion on Syria…